I'm going to admit to watching Survivor here, so don't judge. It was a show I started watching years ago when I had a flu and I got hooked.
If you don't own a TV, and you only listen to NPR on a hand-cranked radio, and your guilty pleasures in life include an extra drop of honey in your tisane, this diary may not be for you. Still, if you're curious, read on...
Update: a commenter reminded me that Elizabeth Hasselback was on Survivor, so I've adjusted the title accordingly
One of the things I love about Survivor is thinking about how badly I would suck at it. As soon as I find myself agreeing with a contestant's approach to some situation, that contestant is pretty much doomed. I figure my Survivor career would be about this long:
Jimmy: Hey, guy, can you help us collect some firewood?
Me: Hmm, well, first of all, my name's not "guy". And as for the wood, let's think about that for a sec. We want to be careful not to disturb any habitat, and also, I'm afraid of slugs.
The people on this show make decisions that baffle me - allying with total douchebags, voting off strong people, not constantly messing with the camera crew.... it's all a fascinating reminder of how that 18th century concept of the mind is just a recipe for getting the shit kicked out of you at the next tribal council.
Anyway, I didn't watch Survivor on Thursday, because I was busy working on another snarky diary and wanted to get it done before the debate. So I TiVoed it. I watched it yesterday, and for a brief moment, had a most painful flashback to the debate. Hard to describe in words, so I put together this mashup to illustrate:
Perhaps I'm asking too much. I mean, don't we all go through life with one or two expressions that we learn very late or not at all, or a phrase that we misuse to extremely comic effect? Oftentimes, these come out at embarrassing moments and our friends mock us about it year after year until we want to pour milk all over their car seats when they're not looking.
For example, I used to think spontaneous human combustion was a well-documented phenomenon (I have an older brother, you see...). My wife still talks about things being hermeneutically sealed. There was a This American Life episode recently that was full of such examples. One of the people in the story thought unicorns were simply extinct and not fantasy (sort of the opposite of how Sarah Palin thinks about dinosaurs).
BTW - if someone can point me to that episode, I'd appreciate it. I've dug through their archives and can't find it, and if I just dreamed that episode then (a) I really need to watch some NASCAAR and burn my windsurfer and (b) that was a really good episode so they should totally do it.
Anyway, I know there are many more substantive faults to find with Palin's performance on Thursday, and if she gets elected, her lack of erudition (or 5th grade reading comprehension) will be the least of our worries, but I do think it's fair to ask, just how important IS the book-learning to book-burning ratio in our president? Because, honestly, if you trace a trendline from W, through Palin, can President Camacho be more than a few terms away?